Wednesday, October 5, 2016

"Never Gonna Give You Up", or "The Ups and Downs of Goals"

A small spot of respite on the Clark's trail climb.

Jared wanted a goal to motivate him to ride this summer. My
friend, like me, loves to ride, but work, family, home improvement projects and
drinking beer tend to get in the way of riding as much as we'd like. And
because neither of us like Ikea and herring enough to move to Sweden where they
are considering a 6 hour workday, a target like a mountain bike race seemed
like a good way for us to reset our priorities.

Before I knew what he had in mind, I had already planned to agree.
As men with our fittest days in the rearview mirror, we were very prone to
falling into the mid-life motivational trap that triggers 50% of all marathon,
tri and LOTOJA registrations. Setting goals requires a balance between
challenging yourself while also protecting yourself from disappointment if (and
in all likelihood "when") you fall short of your goals. That's why I
tend to keep goals to myself. When they are "on the record", goals
can be like singing Rick Astley at karaoke, some people may have respected me
for trying it, but ultimately, everyone at Bar Deluxe saw it as a fail.

Big goals are achieved with smaller goals, or as I call
them, "one little victory". I'm going to share a little victory from
last week when I dropped the hammer mountain biking at Corner Canyon and
recorded my personal best on the Clark's trail climb. Now, before I start
belting out, "Never gonna give you up," bear in mind that at 40 years
old, I agreed to Jared's preposterous idea to ride 25 Hours in Frog Hollow, a
one-day race near Hurricane. 10 years ago, this would have been very feasible
considering my fitness, but now I have to admit, at this point in my life, it
seems a little questionable. As a member of a four-man team, I'll likely ride
at least four, maybe five, 13 mile laps over a 25 hour period. In recent years,
that could have equaled my entire annual mountain biking output. So you might understand
why I'm trying to cling to little victories in the saddle of my Scott 29er.

So last week on Monday's I beat my best recorded time on
Clark's by 2 minutes and had a little victory. A jump even I didn't expect.
Most of my climbs to that point were between 22 and 24 minutes, so breaking 22
was really all I was looking for. With my buddy Jared and his uncle, (lean
riders built for climbing) breathing down my neck, I kept cranking that middle
ring with all the energy I could muster from my power plant legs. I rarely let
up until the last third of a mile and somehow kept my chest from exploding. Say
what you will about my body, but after years of hauling me across this earth on two wheels, my legs found a way to keep turning that
middle ring. I got me to the top in 20 minutes and 4 seconds, still nearly 8
minutes off the time of some carbon fiber asshole... meaning his mountain bike is carbon fiber, not an actual asshole made of carbon fiber, (although I'm sure someone's looking into that. After all, carbon fiber makes everything better.)

Yet this was a cause for
excitement. I told myself the night before that I wanted to crack 22 minutes,
and I did much better than that. "So what will happen on the next
ride," I started wondering. "Could I make another 2 minute jump? What
if I slid backwards? I can't regress!" Just like beer leads to more beer,
goals lead to more goals. Regardless of whether the 20 minute time signaled me
entering a new level of fitness or just had a day where everything came
together, improvement should not be assessed and analyzed, it should be
appreciated. So even though on my next rides out, I wasn't any faster, they
were still fun because I know what I can do. Frankly, I'm certain that
regardless of how I ride at Frog Hollow, it really won't change my life. Saying
I did it is really only of value to me and maybe my wife who won't have to
listen to me bitch about it. And if for some reason I don't do it, no one is
really going to give a shit. They'll just leave thinking, "Damn that dude
really likes Rick Astley."

No comments:

About this Ski Pundit

I have a love of skiing, cycling and writing. The evolution of skierSSummit.com could be traced back many years to when this cheesehead put skis on for the first time and snowplowed down a frozen mound that barely deserved the title of "hill". Since that "Weeeee" filled day, most of my outdoor bliss has been a product of the mountains. Here I share the dharma of the mountains and hope that even if I'm not informing, I'm at least entertaining. I'm not writing for resort promotion, I'm not writing to convince you what gear to buy (although I will give you my honest opinion of what I've used and abused) and I'm not writing for self-promotion. I'm instead narrating my story of recreating in the west and the passion I have for preserving the sanctuary of nature.